Simple question. Which distribution was your introduction?
For me, it was SLS Linux in '92-93, followed relatively naturally by Slackware, which was followed by Redhat.
RedHat here in the late 90s, back when you could still find yourself writing a “modeline.”
Then Debian in the early 00s when apt was still a major discriminator. Finally, Ubuntu around 2008 just so I was running the same thing I was recommending to family members for ease of use. (At the time, Ubuntu sported the same ease of installation and hardware detection I’d found with Knoppix.)
Now on Xubuntu, but seriously eyeing a return to Debian.
RedHat in the mid-late 90s here too. It wasn’t a great time for the linux desktop haha. I think I used afterstep or windowmaker back then. RPM hell was bad and hosed my system enough that Debian was like a savior with apt-get. Never really looked back from debian based systems since.
Oh wow my first distro was also RedHat sometime around 1999. It had a GUI, so I’m thinking Gnome 1 days maybe?
As a kid in 1998, I installed Slackware to one of the two family computers. My parents were less proud than you might possibly think.
That’s crazy. If one of my kids installed any Linux distribution on a computer, I’d be proud as hell.
Slackware and then SuSE 7.2, I think it was.
Slackware here, and I still use it! Tried several alternatives but I just keep going back.
Mandrake Linux 6.5. At the time I was drawn to it because they had a version that worked with the sims game.
Red Hat Linux 6.2. I, too, got it out of a book, but I don’t remember which one.
Debian 3.0 for me in 96. I used the boot floppies version as my PC didn’t have a CD-ROM in it. I think there was like 20-something floppies.
I also still have my CDs from that era for Slackware and Redhat 5.0 somewhere…
It was around 2001 and I started by dual booting Windows with Red Hat, don’t remember which version. Eventually I dropped Windows and dropped the dual boot and switched from Red Hat to Ubuntu.
SLS in ‘94
OpenBSD on the Amiga in 95-96 or so.
My first distro was Manjaro. It was really cool, but also I remember having some trouble getting things to work on it without super extensive troubleshooting.
but also I remember having some trouble getting things to work on it without super extensive troubleshooting
still the standard experience
For me it was an old version of red hat. Back when our internet connection got upgraded from dial-up to cable. I wanted to have access in my own room, so started figuring out how to setup a router. This was with ipfwadm, so in the kernel 2.0 day in the mid to late 90’s
Red Hat 6.2 - Got it on 2 CDs that came with the 1999 version of Red Hat Linux for Dummies.
A PowerPC version of Ubuntu (I forget now the exact version or year but it was sometime around 2005ish) that I ran from a live CD on my G4 Mac Mini.
First I actually installed and used seriously was Ubuntu 12.04 on an old PC.
Slackware, installed with floppies on a 486.I tried debian red hat suse coral linux but always came back to Slackware.There was a bunch more, that I cant remember the names of, one I do remember was Stampede linux, Daniel Robbins put it out, he then dumped it and made Gentoo, I used Gentoo for a year or so, on an original AMD Athlon, it was night and day different from un optimised Slackware. I saw an announcement for a new distro on the gentoo forums for Arch, 686 optimisations, no need to compile!. I installed that and used it for about 9 years. I got sick of all the breakages, the systemd adoption drama, briefly went back to Gentoo( or Funtoo, actually), then discovered Void. I have been using Void since 2010, I also use Openbsd, reminds me of the ‘old days’ of linux before the tech bros and corporations.
